Around January 7, 1833

In this day and age, newspapers rarely print fiction. Of course, there is the occasional magical story written by a third grade class that appears every once a week in the Arts and Entertainment section of the paper, but for the most part, fictional stories of real substance are not published in newspapers anymore. This was not the case in the 1800's. Appearing in The Valley Star each week was...

Women like Laura Margaret Cole Smith of South Carolina were not blind to the implications of politics for the Union as a whole. Upon receiving news of the 1832 Nullification Crisis, Laura wrote to her cousin Camille explaining her opinions on the state of the Union. Smith held steadfastly to her belief in South Carolina's states rights. Although the prospect of war saddened her because her father...

On January 1, 1833, when Charles Manigault moved slaves from another plantation he owned to Gowrie Plantation, several miles up stream from Savannah Georgia, he left neat columns of names to inventory his property, while at the same time, putting brackets around each slave family. Furthermore, next to each slave's name he wrote descriptions. Not physical descriptions but personality traits....

December of 1832 saw another sale of lands that were the rightful property of Cherokee and Creek Indians in Georgia. The Native Americans of Georgia were forced from their homes and lands because the state government saw the land as being underused and mismanaged by the Indian tribes. This act of selling Indian lands was known as the Georgia Land Lottery and in 1832 it again sold off native...

According to the Elizabeth City Star, the proposal to send free blacks to the colony of Liberia was a "scheme entirely Utopian." This North Carolina newspaper praised the American Colonization Society's ideas about how to handle the "race problem," as they deemed the growing number of newly freed blacks in America. A group of prominent Americans convened in December 1816 and established...

Sectional tensions between the North and South increased following the Tariff of 1828. The tariff placed a high tax on foreign goods to stimulate domestic manufacturing, and, in turn, placed strains on the Southern economy as the British reduced their imports of cotton. Many declared the tariff unconstitutional and thought that it infringed upon the individual states' rights. To quell the...

"A child of 8 years had lost the use of his arms, one leg was almost crippled, hip popped out of place, thigh and arms swollen..." wrote a journalist for the Kentucky Gazette. The list of this young boy's maladies continues in the article. One would think this boy had no hope for survival from whatever illness had attacked his young body. However, "on taking these Drops he recovered...

John C. Calhoun led an ambitious political life. He sat in James Monroe's Cabinet in the 1810s and 1820s. Then, in the hotly contested presidential election of 1824, Calhoun ran, but resigned himself to second place, where he neatly fit in as John Quincy Adams' vice president. In a time when political party affiliations were never stable, Calhoun aligned himself with Andrew Jackson half-way...

Slave owners and merchants reading the December 28, 1832 edition of the AmericanBeacon gazed with curiosity at the plethora of goods available for sale in the local market. Advertisements present in the Norfolk-based newspaper attempted to sell goods such as Christmas supplies, hats, and chlorine tooth wash. While these impersonal objects were goods commonly traded and sold in...

In the early 1830s two of the most pressing questions in the nation were the issues of nullification and secession. A common trend among politicians was to use the ideas of the founders to argue both for and against these ideas, hence it is not surprising that on December 28, 1832 Alexander Rives, a Virginia lawyer, wrote to James Madison, one of the last surviving Founding Fathers, seeking council...